


All the Lost Children

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [36]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Artistic Wankery, Corporal Punishment, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Prequel, Savoy massacre, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 13:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11232123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: You know there will be scars made here.





	All the Lost Children

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheLovethief](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLovethief/gifts).



> Gift Fic for TheLoveThief
> 
> “Would be really interesting to have Treville's POV of the day he ordered the first and only flogging in the garrison.”
> 
> CW: Actually very non-graphic for a story about a flogging. That said, there are some attitudes expressed about corporal punishment and recovery from trauma that the reader may find upsetting.

Young Porthos stops you on the stairs. “Sir,” he says, dogged and stubborn. “Sir.”

“You will remove your hand,” you tell him.

He looks down and realises he’s gripping your leather sleeve, opens his fingers in alarm. His jaw tightens. He has his mother’s eyes: dark as fertile earth, intelligent, fierce. He is beautiful when angry.

"There’s no flogging here. That’s what you told me when I joined up.”

It’s true. Yours is a prime Regiment: elite soldiers labour for years to prove themselves worthy of a place. Yours are gentlemen for the most part, or they become so - wild as they are, breaking out the cat would do far more harm to discipline than good. Over Porthos’ shoulder, you see Serge the Cook and one of your veterans, Dentremont, rig a whipping post, tight-lipped. It’s late in the spring, but early enough in the day that there’s still a hint of mist in the air. Your younger Musketeers mill in the yard, unsettled.

Porthos has Marie-Cessete’s stubbornness, also. “Can you at least tell me why?”

“Conduct unbecoming,” you tell him grimly, and are shouldering past when a thought strikes you. “Is Aramis still sleeping in your quarters?”

Porthos jaw rises defiantly. “He ain’t weak for dreaming.”

“Take him out to Saint-Sulpice. There’s a side chapel he likes to pray in. I don’t really care. But keep the boy away until noon.”

Understanding starts to flower in his eyes, and he nods, turning on his heel. It’s well enough. This isn’t a lesson that Porthos needs, you know. And Aramis… doesn’t need another reason not to sleep at night.

**

The journey back from the Savoyan border goes slowly, the lumbering hired wagons taking their own steady pace with their cargo of corpses. The lone survivor rides with you, a five-year veteran clinging like a lost child to the pillion of one or another of your soldiers - the gentle sway of the horses is easier on his battered body than the stiff wooden wheels, you think. He throws up less, when he rides.

Behind you on Juno, your great Friesian, he stirs and creaks out the first words of the day. “Where did... Marsac… find you?”

“Marsac didn’t find us,” you tell him gently, and he says nothing more.

On the slow journey back you and the rest of the recovery party take him into your beds turn and turn about - the shared animal heat of your bodies the best cure for cold-strike that you know.

You wake to a call of the village bell in the dark watch of the night. Your bones ache and you want to turn on your side to ease them.

There is a hand on your chest, slipped through the vent of your shirt’s neck opening to rest palm down over your heart. You can feel the faintest stir against the bristles of your chest as you breathe and, turning your head on the flat pillow, realise that in the barest hint of light left by the banked fire he is watching you. His eyes glitter. You don’t move.

It is with relief that you hand him off to ride with Dentremont the next day, and Porthos the day after.

**

Years ago, and your boots click on the baking hot flag stones of the villa that is your temporary quarters on the Spanish border.

“It’s so warm…”

You look up, and up, and see, perched on a balcony rail in full sun, the marksman you traded from d’Essart’s Guards for five barrels of apple brandy and your sister’s hand in marriage. (You would have given your consent to the match anyway, but Giles d’Essart doesn’t need to know that.)

Aramis lets his eyelids droop to slits and tilts his head back, locks of his glossy hair tumbling around his shoulders. He sighs happily.

“It will be too hot soon,” you tell him.

“I don’t believe you,” he answers gravely. Unbidden, his fingers find their way to his chin and toy with the soft tuft of his first beard.

“If you keep picking at that,” you say, “it will fall off.”

His eyes fly open and he covers his chin with his hand.

A month later, when an outbreak of headlice necessitates the cropping and shaving of every soldier billeted in the villa, the mortification on his face is stunning. You make it all the way back to your private quarters before firmly locking the door, leaning against it, and howling with laughter.

**

Aramis is docile under the barber-surgeon’s hands as he clips back the hair enough to tend to the raw cut on the temple. He nods in weary acquiescence and the man takes the rest of it off, neatening his scalp into a close crop and then taking off his beard while he’s at it.

At a soft word he unties his shirt laces and lets the garment drop to puddle around his hips. Obedient, he leans forward, bracing himself with his hands on his knees as the barber-surgeon makes small cuts on his upper back and covers them with glass cups, heated so they will suck out the blood as they cool.

“Just a little,” the barber-surgeon tells him kindly. “I know you soldiers. But we don’t want the humours stagnating in your lungs, eh?” The boy shakes his head then cringes as something - pain? vertigo? - stirs inside him.

You let the curtain fall and step away.

**

The Cardinal - Armand-Jean du Plessis duc de Richelieu - is praying in his office when you answer his message.

He kneels simply on the padded kneeling-bench of the simple _prie-dieu_ set against the wall, his clever, ferocious features drawn into something calm and grave as he works a plain rosary with his long fingers. (You forget, sometimes, that he is also a man of the cloth.) He wears humble clothing, black cassock and black skullcap, none of the pomp and regalia he usually affects. Today he looks like a servant, or a simple man, or a village priest from a time long ago when you feared nothing but God. (Later you will wonder, how much he planned that wardrobe for _you.)_

“Walk with me,” he says simply.

**

No battlefield is pretty. This, the disordered campsite is almost… tidy, in places, new-fallen snow covering most of the bodies. Some of your Musketeers woke up in time to fight, dropped in their tracks with swords near their hands. Durand, Baptiste, and Moreau-the-Younger lie in a small group where they held a strong point for a time, fighting back to back, and had felled some of their attackers still garbed in Spanish-style breastplates. There’s a heap of black cloth tumbled against one of the fir trees.

The campsite hasn’t been _robbed,_ you notice. The low tents have been knocked over, the bodies jumbled about, but that’s only from the wolves and crows, and ravens, rooting about for food at the end of the barest season of the year.

Young Porthos, still a little green from the bad fish that kept him off this training mission, stands rooted. He isn’t new to campaigning - he’ll get his grip in a minute. Meanwhile you move among the bodies with Dentremont and Cornet, wrapping your men in canvas and carrying them, stiff as wood, to the wagons. The black birds, irritable at the disturbance, caw insolently and hop the barest distance possible before settling down to peck at the soft parts of the corpses. You bow your head but do not pray, stitching them into their wrappers with stiff hands.

A rustle. A sour caw, and another. A shushing stumble.

And the whistling ululation that comes next, _it isn’t human._

Your head snaps around and you see Porthos running across the snow and slush, skidding to his knees by the pile of cloth against the trees. The black birds scatter into the air. The cloth falls open and you see a white hand, feebly smacking out, another desperately gripping a gun.

“Sh, sh,” Porthos says, low and warm as his mother. “It’s me, Porthos, remember? Sh, sh, you can shoot me if you like but I’ll be real sorry after.”

The breathy wail hiccups. Starts again. Stops.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Porthos says, “breathe with me, Aramis. Can I, can I have the gun now?”

He gathers the bundle of cloth into his arms.

**

His hair has grown out to an awkward stage, too short to curl, long enough that the cowlicks at the back of his head stand out, leaving him with a perpetually startled look. Aramis keeps his eyes lowered, studying his fingers as they ruffle the cloth of his breeches, and asks the barber-surgeon, hesitantly, when the dizziness will pass.

 _”Soon,”_ you tell him gruffly, doing the Captain’s job of supplying faith where there is none.

His eyes flick up, and you realise he’s lost all ability to guard his face. Surprise, then, in his dark eyes, then a small and quiet joy and, finally, a tightening of his jaw as he refuses to look at the door behind you.

You keep yourself still, forcing yourself to look. “I need you to be well,” you tell him, still gruff but soft. “I need my good soldier back on his feet.”

His back straightens; his chin lifts. He sees, finally, the long leather coat slung over your arm, the weapon belt you hold, and he looks at you with simple hunger.

You take the boy shooting, propped up in a quiet part of the yard with three pistols shared between you. He misses half the targets but that isn’t the point today. Best of all you don’t have to look at him as you stand at his shoulder.

**

The controlled clamour of the Musketeer’s mess falls. You look up and see Aramis walking through the door wrapped in his leather coat, come in out of the night for the first time since he went to the Savoy border. He steps carefully, as if worried his head will fall off. Ten feet in he lists slowly to the side, catching himself grimly on the edge of wooden table. Silence.

Then he cocks his head, grins, and starts to giggle.

Your Musketeers gather round him then like large friendly dogs, clapping him on the back and shoulders and drawing him back into the life of the Regiment. Your shoulders unknot themselves.

**

That colonnade with the square white columns, that looks out on that pretty, toybox garden, strays into your sleep.

You walk along it in your dreams, you and the Cardinal, and you talk of grave and simple matters.

Savoy, Savoy, the little door in the mountains, and if it ever opens you’ll have Spanish troops coming in on three different fronts…

 _You are a good soldier,_  he says again. _Do you love your country? Would you die for it?_

 _Of course,_ you snap, shoulders tense. _But what can I do about it now?_

And grave, so grave, so very sad, he asks, _Have you not sent a troop to the Savoyan border…?_

**

The stable block is the place for idle talk. You tolerate it mostly, so long as the work gets done. Everyone needs to vent, every now and then. But not this time.

Moreau-the-Elder’s voice is cracking in his grief and his rage. “I come back from long deployment and my brother is _dead_ and that pretty-boy is, he’s _la-aughing?”_ There’s an awkward rustle among his listeners. “That isn’t, how can that be normal. What did he do, my friends? _Who_ did he get down on his -”

 _”THAT IS THE END OF ENOUGH!!”_ you roar, turning the corner.

**

Moreau-the-Elder - just Moreau, now - is pale, with butter-blond hair and milk-white skin from his Norman heritage. Colour stands high in his cheeks; he peels well, wide-shouldered and burly _sans_ his padded doublet and billowing shirt. The lashes will show up bright, on his back. He trembles slightly, as he lifts his wrists to be bound to the post, from cold, or fear, or anger: you don’t care. Already the humiliation of this will last him long after the burn of the whip has faded.

You tell the ranks that good soldiers depend on each other. That they must stand shoulder to shoulder, back to back, and if there is no trust they will all fall. That Moreau is _welcome_ to resign his commission if he does not have faith in anyone he serves with and good riddance to him. His head comes up, stiff and furious, but he remains silent until the first lick of the nine-tailed cat drags a shocked cry out of him.

It’s only ten lashes, though you don’t pull your blows at all. You’re here to make a point, not break a man. Still, his broad back is bloody when you’re done and you know there will be scars made here that he will carry to the end of his days.

Dentremont cuts him down, gruff but kindly, and walks Moreau down to the infirmary to get his back cleaned. He’s a canny man, Dentremont, good with the young ones. You suspect the conversation he has now with Moreau will do as much good as this… demonstration, and that is well enough.

“Clean that up,” you order two of your men. Turning to the rest, grim, you snap, _”Dismissed.”_

**

Late summer, and Aramis lounges on one of the solid tables, down to billowing shirtsleeves with lace on his collar and his beard grown to a neat point, and eats cracked nuts from a little wooden bowl. He eyes - critically? appreciatively? - the dark-haired man with a scarred lip, in the fussy-dowdy garb of a provincial noble, who's come walking through your gates.

"Rubbish," says Porthos, from the bench a little below him, "the man's a drunkard."

"No, but," says Aramis. "Look at his hands."

"You and your _hands, hands, hands,"_ says Dentremont from the other bench.

"Clearly, they belong to a gifted swordsman," says Aramis, with great dignity. Then, diffidently, he offers the bowl to the others at the table. Porthos takes a healthy fistful, and Dentremont. Then, after an elbow in the side from the older man, butter-haired Moreau takes his share. Aramis smiles down at him, quick and fleeting.

Moreau says quietly, "We can always use another good soldier."

**Author's Note:**

> // _Yours are gentlemen for the most part… breaking out the cat would do far more harm to discipline than good_ \- I’d say that holds true for a _lot_ more situations than ‘gentlemen’, but this is Treville’s POV and it was a different time, so...
> 
> // _and covers them with small glass cups_ \- bleeding/wet cupping has been a traditional go-to remedy in Europe for thousands of years. I wn’t swear to its efficacity. (Turns out wet cupping is still practiced, though today practitioners tend to describe it as ‘helping the circulation’ or ‘treating metabolic syndrome’ over ‘rebalancing humours’).
> 
> // _Have you not sent a troop to the Savoyan border…?_ \- I can’t remember where, but I recently read some theorising that, given travel times to and from the Savoy border, and the speed with which things must have blown up, the expedition probably wasn’t planned as a sacrifice from the start, but an intelligence operation jury-rigged around the soldiers that were already travelling there. Sounds legit.


End file.
